As
a woman, especially a 5’2” woman without a black belt in a
single martial art, I am not supposed to walk alone at night.
Ever. Anywhere. This is a point of agreement that crosses
many boundaries—age, politics, residency, gender. In fact,
according to many I’m barely supposed to stick my nose outside
at all after dark.

I get reminded of this periodically from many quarters, most
obnoxiously from those e-mail forwards from well-meaning friends
containing “12 safety tips for women” that boil down to “hide
in your closet at all times unless you’ve got a football team
for an escort,” or news about the latest (completely false)
strategy that serial killers and rapists use to lure women
to their doom. (Newsflash: No one has ever lurked in a backseat
of a car waiting to rape its driver. Never. And rapists don’t
target women with ponytails they can grab either.)

In fact even my beloved urban- legends Web site Snopes.com
(which everyone should check before forwarding anything) falls
into the same hype even while debunking these very e-mails.
In the midst of tearing down the bizarre statistics, flat-out
falsehoods and facile answers in one of these self-defense
e-mails, the Snopes writer suddenly becomes a scolding granny
of her own: “Complacency kills. . . . (none of this “Oh, it’s
only a few blocks; I’ll just walk” at 3 a.m.).” So much for
“Take Back the Night.”

Public-service announcement: Don’t send me this crap. I’m
mild mannered, but I do have my limits.

It’s not (as my mother was so wont to accuse me of in high
school) that I think “it can’t happen to me.” I’ve been mugged
because I was too nice, and learned from it. I know someone
who had a rapist force his way into her apartment with a knife.
I read the news.

I am vigilant about my surroundings. I have a whistle on my
keychain, don’t carry a lot of cash, and don’t wear headphones
in part because I want to be able to hear footsteps behind
me. I walk briskly. I spend a good portion of my time working
through violent and grotesquely detailed fantasies about how
I would respond if attacked, prepping myself to get over nice-girl
inhibitions about screaming, running, and fighting. I know
that some of the tips in those e-mails (like always
run if you can) are worth bearing in mind.

And yes, there are some places and some times that I won’t
walk alone—they just may not follow conventional wisdom. Give
me a crowded street in a poor city neighborhood over a deserted
suburban parking lot any day.

But here’s the thing: Being attacked randomly on a dark street
is possible, but extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, the consequences
of never walking alone at night would be immediate and real:
It would mean more driving, which (1) I hate to do and (2)
is against my environmental values. It would cost me more
in gas, and possibly require a second car. It would reduce
the amount of exercise I get dramatically. (My chances of
dying from a stroke if I don’t exercise are much higher
than my chances of being a victim of a violent crime.) It
would mean I learned less about the neighborhoods in my city,
saw less interesting stuff, and bumped into people I knew
less often. Basically, and most importantly, it would mean
that I was restricting my own freedom based on being a vulnerable
little female. (Retch.)

Even Snopes gets fed up with the insistency of this typecasting.
From a discussion of the variations on the “killer in the
backseat” theme: “Even as a horror legend, this one is sexist
to the core. As mentioned earlier, the prey is always female
and both the evil fiend and the rescuer are male—there are
no exceptions to this typecasting. Both male figures are seen
as powerful: the fiend for his evilness and mad intent, the
rescuer for his coolness in knowing what to do and his ease
in dispatching the fiend. . . . The woman, by contrast is
portrayed as completely and unredeemably ineffective.”

You may ask what I am going to do if something does happen
to me. Probably change my habits—not because they were wrong,
but because I really do have a healthy respect for the trauma
that crime victims suffer, and I have no illusions that I
would be able to blithely go on my way with the same risk
tolerance. But I would rather have had my freedom up until
that point.

The point is, we all risk traumatic things all the time. Despite
the prevalence of date rape and domestic abuse, we date, sometimes
while drunk and high, and marry. (In fact, one of my other
complaints about this obsession with protecting women from
strangers is how it distracts from the far more prevalent
problems of women being attacked by people they know.) Despite
the insane numbers of deaths from car accidents, we drive
on the highway (not to mention that most of us speed). People
with bee-sting allergies go outside sometimes without EpiPens
strapped to their wrists and people with fatal food allergies
eat in restaurants. We all choose our levels of acceptable
risk. Telling women that they can’t do the same on this one
issue is nothing more than a patronizing return to “poor things—they
shouldn’t go to college/play sports, it’s too hard on their
sensitive little constitutions.”

And, finally, I insist on my right to walk at night in part
because allowing fear-mongering to keep women, and often men
too, off the streets at night makes the streets less safe.
I don’t want to be part of that little vicious cycle, for
the sake of not only my freedom, but that of everyone around
me.